Tuesday, May 19, 2009

JPA Scholarship: Prestigous Reward or Financial Assistance?

Faced with pressure from the non-Bumiputera political parties after the dismal GE12 results, Pak Lah relented and change the Malay:Non-Malay ratio of Government scholarship to 51:49, I believe.

This is a grave mistake by Pak Lah. But, the sickening thing is UMNO is dumbfounded and clueless to answer to any subsequent matters arising from those mistakes.

Harapkan blogger juga nak menjawab. Letih ...

Pandora Box

Pak Lah's portioning was somewhat strange. Has the population ratio of Bumi:Non-Bumi changed to 51:49? Or perhaps it is the voters ratio?

Another issue is: Did his actions received blessing of the Majlis Raja-Raja?

Article 153 state that Raja-Raja Melayu are guardian to the Bumiputera interest. Thus, any reduction in allocation under Article 153 has to constitutionally receive prior blessing from Raja-Raja Melayu.

I believe he didn't do it. The likelihood is that there was no such practises before.

The most damaging part of Pak Lah's action is that it opened the Pandora Box of more and unrelenting demands.

In The Star today (read at the bottom of this posting), Deputy Education Minister Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong claim MCA received appeal from 800 deserving students. A simple guess would be the bulk of them are non Malays and predominantly Chinese.

If the attitude the Malay described as "bagi betis nak peha" persist, will this encourage dialogue and give and take among the communities or adverial response?

Sugar-coated hipocrasy

Coincidently or by design, "multiracial" party DAP added more pressure on Government. Lim Kit Siang repeated his age old stance here and here. DAP is organising a forum tonight here.

Cutting through the chase, DAP in unison with MCA, are demanding more JPA scholarship for non-Malay specifically Chinese.

So much for Malaysian Malaysia. As I see, it has always been a Chinese agenda that is sugar coated with fallacious claims for democrasy, fairness and equity, human rights, etc.

Where is Singaporean Singapore today?

Penang Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng warn of applying OSA on matters not related to national security, defense, and other strategic matters. Selangor Speaker Chang Tan Kim claim he can be complainant, judge and jury.

And, warned against speaking to the press. So much for freedom of the press.

[Thus far, the manner I introduce this issue will definately invite accusation of racist against me and nasty personal insults. Let me forewarn. I will not publish juvenile comments filled with insults. Off course, unless I am dishing out insult too. Then I have to be a gentleman to play fair.

So, do discuss the matter intelligently with facts and arguments, without the emotion, and better still with civility. ]

Ibrahim added Ong's remark is motivated by his selfish racial interest. By compromising to his demands, it does not necessarily translate into non-Malay votes for Barisan Nasional.

True enough, MCA and MIC could not and will not deliver non-Malay votes for BN. They have been found to perform poorly and even neglected their constituencies. Why should their demand be taken seriously? Thus, the Prime Minister should not secede more ground. As it is, Government have already change the policy to 51:49 ratio.

In response to MCA's list of 800 rejected applicants, Ibrahim is compiling a similar list of rejected qualified Bumiputera students. Contact his office or Perkasa's office here.

Merit or Needs?

My view on this relates back to a call by both MCA and DAP for JPA Scholarshop to be awarded based on purely merit.

Thats another giveaway for sugar coated justification which is hiding their chauvanistic racial interest too. Generally, Chinese students are academically better, thus meritocrasy will favour them.

Now, DAP, before this PAP, have been persistently arguing for decades that race based policy be abolished for policy they described as "sama rata, sama rasa".

The counter argument by the pro-affirmative action proponent is that equitable does not mean fairness and justice. The argument is the historical economic condition of Malays during independence till today.

To add, Chinese guanxi have a stronghold on the economy that it is difficult for a Malay to rise from rag to riches. The only way would be to kow tow to the taukeh and be their nominees and front.

On the interim, DAP have been arguing for the part of NEP in the eradication of poverty irrspective of race. They rejected the part for restructuring of society to level the playing 'economic' field.

Reward or Assistance?

Taking into account the claim that the JPA scholarship is racially biased and the existence of leakage in the system, it does not hide the fact that the basis of Government scholarship is to assist the economically handicapped.

JPA scholarship is not essentially a scholarship per se but a "welfare" program for students from lower income family.

For example, Rhodes scholarship are given to bright and brilliant students to cover for their tuition and living expenses. In fact, receiving such scholarship is an honour. JPA scholars in turn had to serve the Government and suffer a lower paying job for the early part of the gradautes career.

By demanding JPA scholarship be given based on meritocrasy, it denies the economically handicapped Bumiputera students access to higher education. Unlike the Chinese for instance, low income Bumiputera have limited alternative source of funding for higher education.

Will it be fair to deny potential Bumiputera students without other ways and means access to higher education?

There is another side to the simplistic generalisation.

----------------------------

Cabinet to hear cases of 800 top scorers who didn’t get scholarships

By FOONG PEK YEE and NG CHENG YEEThe Star, Tuesday May 19, 2009

PUTRAJAYA: More than 800 straight-A students will have their appeals for Public Services Depart­ment (PSD) scholarships taken up to the Cabinet for discussion.

“I have just briefed the party president (Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat) on the matter and the four MCA ministers will bring it to the Cabinet,” he said here yesterday.

Dr Wee said the situation this year had shocked even him – although the MCA Youth chief and party national education bureau chairman had been handling education and scholarship issues since 2001.

He cited the case of a student with 6A1 and 4A2 who obtained a scholarship to study engineering. On the other hand, there were complaints from students with 13A1s and 14A1s that they were given places to do matriculation instead of being awar­ded with scholarships.

He stressed that such alternatives should be made known earlier, not just dished out to the students.

Dr Wee added there must also be a transparent system of awarding scholarships.

Asked whether publishing the names of the scholarship recipients could help address the question of fairness and transparency in selection, Dr Wee said he hoped this would be done by the PSD not too long from now.

The Cabinet had in January refined the distribution of scholarship: 20% solely on merit, 10% for the underprivileged, 10% for those from Sabah and Sarawak and the remaining based on ethnic quota, co-curriculum, results and socio-economic background.

Meanwhile students, parents and teachers who contacted The Star said they were shocked by the “consolation prize” (getting a place to do matriculation instead of a scholarship to study overseas) given to many of those with 13A1s and 14A1s.

They also raised a host of other problems, including that the scholarship recipients were not told which country they would be sent to study.

Meanwhile, the DAP wants the Government to show the selection criteria for the PSD scholarships and explain why there was a shift in implementation.

DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz had reiterated in Parliament that 55% of the scholarships would be given to bumiputras while the rest was reserved for non-Malays.

“All of a sudden, they just changed the selection criteria. We want to know how many percent of the scholarships are given to bumiputras and non-bumiputras,” the Ipoh Timur MP told a press conference here yesterday.

Lim, three other DAP MPs and three state assemblymen had met with PSD director-general Tan Sri Dr Ismail Adam to discuss the matter.

It is like an Oxford Graduate and a Monash University Graduate attending a job interview.

Everyone knows that by meritocracy, employers should let the Oxford Graduate get the job.

Perhaps a simpler example is where coursemates with different results applying for a vacancy.

It does not mean that the better results kid will get the job.

Academic results will just guarantee you a place in the interview and place you at a priority bracket for consideration and it does not guarantee a successful outcome.

Also, for the JPA scholarship controversy, perhaps I might sound racist but the sentiment among the Chinese is that Bumiputeras have a wider scope of sponsorship options.

This comes in the form of Petronas and MARA scholarships.

MARA sponsorships are basically free of bond as long as you do reasonably well.

The Chinese are looking at a perspective of options and the options seem very limited.

So, the Bumi-non Bumi case cannot be used as a point to argue that Bumiputera needs help and the whole picture cannot be seen as the Chinese controlling the whole PSD scholarship allocation.

Bro.

I have friends who are under MARA, Petronas and JPA.

If you ask me, I would say most of these scholars are at least middle class.

Not many whom are poor receive the scholarship (extremely rare), thus this nullifies the socio-economic argument of scholarships.

I cannot deny that many non Malays who receive the scholarship are well to do people. Some are Directors of companies, high level executives and many more. Some can even afford to buy cars or properties overseas if not several assets in Malaysia.

Bro. The same applies for the Malays. MARA, PSD and Petronas scholars. I see many of them who are rich over here.

So at times it makes me wonder. I am a Chinese who have all the while understood the true meaning of Tun M and Tun Abdul Razak's policy of NEP.

Yet, I wonder how well NEP is implemented.

The web of economic level stays close knitted among the upper class. This is especially so between the Malays.

I sincerely hope that if socio-economic point of view is a worthy argument, then JPA should consider awarding more sponsorships to less fortunate Malays from lower income groups.

Otherwise, it is a big problem.

I am willing to share more on this matter and provide inputs via emails/follow ups here.

For now, I hope JPA ensures that filters are in place even for those who qualify via meritocracy.

Their failure to deliver non-Malay votes justifies not to give them more.

By buckling to them any more justifies more Malays to leave BN. As it is, non-Malay votes lost will never come back. The sentiasa pakai tongkat BN partners wouldn't know how .. not without the UMNO tongkat. BN's survival cannot be depended on its non-Malay bedfellows any more. BN has to look for more Malay votes somewhere obvious.

can someone go tell LKS to fly kite and not turn this into a controversy. JPA basically has 3 types of scholarships. For overseas, IPTA and IPTS...so, the brouhaha on the 6a student...i would like to know if it's juz for local U.

I say enough is enough, Najib must stop bending backwards to please who he can never please,they will just ask for more until there is nothing more to give and you know what, Ong and MCA will never get the votes but DAP will.

Kalau dah sampai bagi betis nak peha, I suggest the Cabinet review the quota decided during Abdullah 's time (51:49) and revert to (65:35) to mirror the demography of this country. I fully support the PERKASA folks.

The UMNO dominated cabinet ministers should just sack themselves if they cannot defend this JPA scholarship policy as required by article 153 of the Constitution.

I've been following ur blog for quite sometime already. I found your blog to be consistent in defending the right of the Malay. Congrat Bro.

What i found most amusing with the chinese is the winner take all mentality. Never give way attitude. Scholarship is scholarship. It is given to the most needy. Now they want to be given to those who are qualified regardless of income. When they dont get it, the call it corruption, leakages and all sort of name calling. Any bad thing is a malay thing. our 10a's is inferior to their 10 a's.

today i have a small chat with an Indian businessman who said we Malays have it easy. I say to him FCUK YOU! 10 years i'm on my own, i didnt get a single cent from any gvt agencies.

Their failure to deliver non-Malay votes justifies not to give them more."

Your comments, they are spot on, right at the heart of the matter and may I add that all CABINET Ministers must know to differentiate between political rights/procuring votes and the Rights of the Majority as entrenched in the Perlembagaan of Malaysia.

To those parties like DAP and MCA who keep on demanding about JPA scholarships based on merit let us first see you offering to give up your rights to your vernacular schools education so that MALAYSIA will finally have just one school system. Too hard isn't it? So how?